Timber. Aerospace. Coffee. Silicon. Seattle

Seattle has been a boomtown a half-a-dozen times over the years. Looks like it is again. The entrepreneurs of the digital age seemed to have settled on the Seattle area as the next big thing - the overcast version of Silicon Valley.

“The Seattle start-up ecosystem is vibrant, and growing rapidly,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Washington and a serial technology entrepreneur.

The University of Washington, in fact, is one of the big draws. It is fostering the entrepreneurial climate here the way Stanford University does in Silicon Valley. Another advantage is the tech-savvy talent at the Seattle-based Amazon and nearby Microsoft.

Microsoft offshoots, sometimes called Baby Bills, after Bill Gates of Microsoft, are being joined by Amazon progeny called Baby Jeffs, for Amazon’s Jeffrey P. Bezos. Baby Sergeys — those formed by veterans of Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., and was co-founded by Sergey Brin — are opening here, too, Mr. Etzioni said.

Etzioni points out that unlike California, people aren't distracted by too much sunshine in Seattle. There isn't any. A veritable paradise for a cubicle rat. But how can they compete with Massachusetts, where the weather is not only bad, it's different every ten minutes?